Sunday, July 29, 2012

The Benefits of Premeditated Procrastination

Odilia Rivera Santos

In a terrible anatomy class I took one time, the professor, who came to class wearing dirty sweatpants with matching dirty sweatshirt, said 'People who study neuroscience do so because they like riddles. neurological disorders are hard to treat ... they haven't really done much in curing anyone.'
Sitting in a coffee shop, I began to think about a scene from In Cold Blood, which leads to the memory of Robert Blake on a talk show saying he was lucky he'd never killed anyone. I would agree that Mr. Blake is lucky in some ways.
Writing about procrastination is itself procrastination because it may not merit my time or attention or yours. I am, nevertheless, hammering away at the topic in consideration of what happens to the brain if it's overworked.
Procrastination, wonderment and daydreaming might be the spa day of the mind.
Cerebral work requires energy, burns calories, lowers blood sugar, and may have a breaking point. Doctoral candidates go on word benders, as an alcoholic might take to drink on a three-day weekend, saying they'll stop after 'I'm done with this chapter.'
For some, words are comfort foods or a good stiff drink.
I'm listening to Roy Orbison and wonder why he would choose to dye his air black, considering how the darkness of his hair made the pallor of his skin look unhealthy.
And if you're still reading, you may be waiting for some wisdom about the topic of neuroscience, neuropsychology or some other neuro from me. But right here, you may have spotted me procrastinating in the middle of an article on procrastination. For the purposes of this article and to see where the mind wanders and what it wonders about, I have procrastinated, hesitated, and taken daydreaming breaks.

Can I call a blog post an article?
An article might have a more highly-structured sentence with less personal anecdotes, opinions, inferences, which simply means the article's author disguises subjectivity or makes a more valiant attempt at doing so. Writing for a blog by myself with no editor allows me to follow a strict formalized structure or a meandering one. Virtuosity has always intrigued me far more than a person's actual profession -- from Tiger Woods's double consciousness to Nabokov's prose and scientific inquiry.
It isn't the vehicle but how deftly one navigates it.
I am doing a lot of different kinds of writing these days and researching subjects to entertain my mind.
Here is an interview I did with Tato Laviera for Latino Rebels: http://www.latinorebels.com/2012/07/11/an-interview-with-tato-laviera-the-king-of-nuyorican-poetical-migrations/

Does a writer become a blogger by having a blog?
I'm still thinking about this one.

A question for the readerWhy are you still reading this article blog post?